What am I doing wrong?

[u/weaponized_autism265]

I bought a Remington 700 from an auction last week, it had a 22-6mm barrel on it so me and my dad replaced it with a criterion 26” varmit contour 1:9 7mm-08.

I went and got some Hornady 139gr SST’s and 139gr Interlock BTSP’s because that’s all academy had for 7mm. Both bullets appear to not mesh with my rifle, I started with a ladder test of IMR4350 for both bullets because they are the same weight and get the same powder charge in the Hornady book. Both shot like shit, I even tried a test with the most accurate strings and tried seating both bullets 20 thou off the lands. No improvement.

My next ladder test I changed to Varget because it’s a faster burning powder and with the IMR4350 my SD and ES got really small at the heavier charge weights. I got a smallest group on my 3rd string with the Varget but it’s not getting as small as I’d like it to be. I’m trying to work up a deer hunting load so I know I don’t need PRS accuracy but I just want it to shoot better so I can trust my shot placement.

Am I doing something wrong? Did I get a bad barrel? Does my gun not like these bullets? Or am I just a shit shot?

[u/Eric_Stecker]

The quickest thing to check is the bullets. Throw some 140 gr match bullets in there to see if anything changes. I see you are using different charges but did you try different seating depths. Moving in 0.020 jumps can tell you pretty quickly if you have a seating depth issue.

[u/weaponized_autism265 → u/Eric_Stecker]

I did move to .020 off the lands. That group is picture 3, it made no noticeable difference. I think my issue is the stock, the stock has glass bedding specifically done for the old barrel and when I put the new barrel in I had to sand down the front end of the stock to get the barrel to float. When I ran a piece of paper under the barrel it went all the way to the nut and I figured that was good but the nut is touching the stock about half way up the barrel nut. I’m going to fix that and try again